


Veins of silver and flecks of gold

by qwertysweetea



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Eventual Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Soulmates, Trans North Italy (Hetalia), Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea
Summary: Gilbert's in love with colours he's never seen. When he talks about them, Feli almost forgets she can't see them either.Soulmate AU where the world is black and white until you meet your soulmate.[Laptop declutter, Apr. 2020]
Relationships: Female North Italy/Prussia (Hetalia), North Italy/Prussia (Hetalia)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Veins of silver and flecks of gold

“Apparently my eyes are crimson; it’s meant to be pretty rare. Roderich said not many people have that colour eyes.”

“That’s a type of red, right? What other things are crimson?” Feliciana replied, turning onto her side, hip digging into the soft grass beneath them.

“He doesn’t talk about it much, says it’s an angry colour. Reminds him too much of the past. He likes blue instead. Calming, he said.”

Colours were such a rare and beautiful concept. Those that could see them, such a small percentage of the world, described them in such vivid and intense detail that as a child it had been hard not to fall in love.

Soulmates had long been an outdated concept; the one for everyone, romantic love being “the true type”; a throwback to a long-gone time, something to keep their primitive ancestors together at the beginning of their evolution, safety in pairs, people had said. It was easier to think like that then to spend your whole life waiting for a one in one-hundred-and-fifty-million short at finding them. People became content with a monochrome world... there wasn't much of a choice in the matter.

There was nothing wrong with a world without colour, adults throughout her life had insisted, it's just a different way of living. The curiosity had been buffered out; twenty years of guardians, teachers and nosy old women chipping away at the romance that black and white authors had placed on them.

Until Gilbert spoke about them.

Gilbert had a way of sounding passionate about most things, but there was a longing in the way he spoke about colours especially that sparked a flame within her. When Gilbert talked about them, it wasn’t just ‘green’ and ‘purple’, they were ‘jade’ and ‘fern’, ‘amethyst’ and ‘grape’. The sea during sunset is the same as the sheen on bubbles, the raspberries on the bushes they passed on their way for a mid-summer picnic had the same depth as the freesias Elizabeta grew on her porch.

The day Gilbert had found out his eyes were crimson, the sky had been a glowing baby blue, cradling the white and grey clouds they could see for what they were. He pointed up at them and traced them with his finger, and described a vein of silver, a shining grey, running along them.

And magenta… they had spent a whole evening on Magenta. Sat back on her sofa with legs crossed underneath her and a half glass of wine in her hand, she listened to him excitedly explain the scientific significance of it. Apparently wine came in three colours too, and the one that they had picked was a Rosé… a glistening, flamingo pink. He had talked until she had fallen asleep, head resting on his lap.

They weren’t simply colours and shades either, there were feelings attached to them, all with different levels of intensity. Anger, sincerity, wisdom and trust. Feliciana had never heard an author described them as ardently as Gilbert, not even those who had spent a lifetime defining romance through their descriptions.

Feliciana thinks that there is going to come a time when Roderich gets tired of all Gilbert’s questions but he doesn’t. When they meet there is always another colour for him to tell her about, another feeling, another part of the universe unlocked, and for a moment, Feliciana forgets that she lives in a world where Gilbert's eyes don't shine when he tells her.

Gilbert is in love with the idea of colours. He’s in love with a life he was never going to get to see, and yet he still asks, drinking in every detail he's given. Her favourite dress is pearl with amaranth flowers with leaves the same shade as those on the lemon tree in her garden. Lovino’s hair is Mocha and cool-toned, the same colour as Roderich’s as it turns out.

He took her to art galleries and pointed at a shade of grey amongst hundreds of others and said: “that’s mellow, it’s a type of pale yellow.”

“Remind me.” Feliciana would smile, leaning her head against his arm.

He would beam back, smile wide and eyes crinkled. “Yellow is the colour of sunflowers and custard, and the glow that sunlight gives everything. Roderich says it's refreshing, like a sip of lemonade on a hot day.”

A sigh breaks through the air; a woman behind them has her eyes trained on the painting too “It’s sad, isn’t it? Not being able to see them. How lucky you are.”

Still, Gilbert’s smile did not drop. “I don’t think it’s sad. It’s enough to know they exist; knowing the beauty is there, whether or not I’ll ever be able to touch it.”

Gilbert might be in love with colours, but Feliciana thinks she might be in love with him, and that... comes with its own heart-wrenching revelations.

'You've known him eight years now Feli. If you were his soulmate, I don't think either of you would be needing Roderich to tell you what colour a damned lemon is.' Lovino had never meant to be cruel, just the more realistic of the two. Gilbert might be okay with never getting to see colour for himself, but Feliciana isn't okay with that, not when she can feel the depth of longing swirling under his skin as he drags her fingers over another faintly different grey shade and utters "Prussian blue."

When Gilbert walks her back home and waits at the gate until her front door is locked behind her, the world goes back to black and white and grey. The coffee that Lovino hands her isn’t umber brown; she doesn’t brush her carrot orange hair out of her eyes. She ties her hair up with a black ribbon, slips off her grey dress and puts on her white robe before stepping into the swaying clear water of the bath.

Nothing glistens or glows, and she wonders if the water would be that faint, translucent blue like the sea in Palma, or if it shines clear like the water that drips from the taps in Gilbert’s back garden. She can’t envision it. Not without him here to describe it for her in his own way.

With Gilbert, it was easy to forget that the world was still black and white.

The ritual continues, as it had for the years they have known one another. They meet, and talk, and laugh, and eat... and Gilbert tells her about another colour, another feeling, another little secret of the universe. She returns to her black and white home, with her black and white brother who doesn't want to hear about colours. She thinks about how in love she is with him, and how she isn’t his soulmate, and how with her he will never get to see the colours he loved… her heart breaks a little, and so does the wall she built up around those feelings. She tries not to think about how close she might be to breaking.

Repeat.

“It’s overcast today. I can’t feel the sun on my face, not for the last few days. Lovino said the rain will probably blow over from Spain.”

“Antonio asked Lovino to stop blaming everything bad that happens on Spain.” Gilbert chuckled back. “Roderich doesn’t like it when it’s overcast. He said the air takes on a different quality, almost misty.”

Repeat.

“I think if I were to guess your hair colour from shade and feeling alone, I’d say it’s blond.”

“You think I’m a blond?” His tries his best to sound outraged.

“Well, am I right?”

“You’re… wrong. It’s white.”

Splinter.

“I see colours when I’m with you." Her teeth clenched together as though she could stop the words from spilling out "Maybe not like I’m supposed to, not like they all say but… when you talk about them, when you point at things, and take my fingers and move them over paintings and plants-” She rolled the cup between her hands, massaging her tension into the porcelain; it's their second cup of coffee, and she isn't feeling as bold as she was when she opened her mouth “-it’s almost like the world stops being monochrome for a few moments," because the thing is, she tries to defend herself, it's true. It's so, so true.

Maybe she's taken too long to say it, or maybe she said it too soon; whatever this is has been building for too long now, dancing on the knifes edge.

“I see colours when I’m with you too." There was a stutter in his breath and uncertainty in his expression that was so opposed to the confident man she’d known for so long. Whether talking about colours or something else, doubt had never been given a place on his expression. It didn’t suit him. "Not because I can see them either but because I’m showing you them.” He paused, damping his lips. “You like lavender-pink and soft pastels, and the thought of iridescence. Your hair is fiery orange and your eyes...” again he paused, his eyes bored into hers with a pained gaze.

When the penny drops it’s loud and sudden enough to make him flinch. Feliciana’s lips parted, a small huff of surprise came with it. “I... never asked for my eye colour.”

He leant forward, only just, expression still so unsure. Unsteady. "That's the thing, I'm trying to say... badly, apparently. Roderich told me, your hair and eyes, the colour of your cheeks but it doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that they're yours."

"Gilbert, if I'm not your soulmate..."

Gilbert’s lips were on hers, closed and light. Cold compared to her own. Gentle. Sweet. Panic-inducing. She allowed her eyes to close. She thought, this feeling couldn’t just be one colour; sparks of pinks and blues, splashes of gold. It conveyed the one thing she had most dreaded, and now the only thing she wanted, to hear: _If I’m not your soulmate, nothing will change, and it doesn't matter at all. I’ve been seeing colour with you for years._


End file.
